I’ve just about had it with NewsGator

I had my gripes with NewsGator when I was using the Outlook Edition 2.0 because it wouldn’t sync my read state of postings. So in 2.5 they fixed that, but I still say “why don’t you sync my categories & flags as well?”

Well, I’ve found something else out about v2.5: I’m not the only one who’s PC is essentially overloaded for the first 10–15 minutes when I login or when it starts downloading my feeds. I have 2GB of memory, a P4 2Ghz w/ HyperThreading, a large disk, and 293 subscriptions. I’m 4 minutes into an update as I type this, only 25% complete, but my CPU is pegged @ 100% and the Outlook.exe process is consuming 149MB!!! This is PATHETIC!

I really like the Outlook integration… I really do. But I’m just about fed up with it. I’ve bitched and moaned so many times here, here, and here. Problem is that I don’t see another aggregator out on the market that I like. RSSBandit’s UI isn’t as slick as I’d like (plus organizing my 293 feeds into categories is a b***h), Omea Reader is a memory hog (not to mention I can’t change the font or layout of the reading panes the same way I can in Outlook… see: 1–line lists), I’m not a fan of SharpReader or any of the others. I’m kinda holding my breath for NG to release FeedDemon to the masses.

But… is anyone working on a next generation RSS aggregator? I’ve toyed with the idea of making my own. I’d like to make it a killer WinForm client with offline feed storage, sync ability between multiple PC’s, features to make it a killer research tool, and visually appealing. Above all, it must be performant and able to run in the background without eating up the rest of my PC. From a technical perspective, I don’t see a reason NOT to use SQL Express & the 2.0 Framework as my platform & storage. As a one man show it would take forever to complete. Maybe open it up as an open source project? I wonder how that would affect my desire to use some commercial UI components (Infragistics, DevExpress, or ChartFX… which I have licenses for)? Maybe I’ll work on the design in my spare time…

We’ll see… but for now, NGOE 2.5 will stay until I have some time to really play with RSSBandit. And for now, I’ll stay pissed, using that “don’t start downloading feeds for 10 minutes after Outlook starts” so I have time to get through my critical emails.